Harry Kelsey Once Owned The Intracoastal

Readers: This is part two of a brief history of the Intracoastal Waterway, courtesy of David Roach, executive director of the Florida Inland Navigation District:

The waterway was originally a private toll canal. But tolls were too meager, and when Henry Flagler’s railroad was extended to West Palm Beach and eventually Miami, the waterway, as an artery of commerce, fell into disuse and disrepair, and it defaulted on its bonds and went bankrupt.

Enter Harry Kelsey, the New England restaurateur and founder of Kelsey City. Kelsey would eventually fall into financial ruin and his planned Utopian community eventually would become Lake Park. Kelsey had bought the waterway, seeing it as a way to bring down potential land buyers.

In the boom years of the 1920s, the railroad, which by then had a monopoly on transportation, was charging what the market would bear, and the market demanded a cheaper alternative. Local governments reportedly were pressing Washington to privatize a public inland waterway. The turning point came in 1921. Vacationing President-elect Warren G. Harding was on a schooner, heading for a golf outing, when the boat ran aground in the channel near Fort Lauderdale. He was stranded with his party for hours. Later, as president, he would not forget his unpleasant day in Florida.